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November’s Top 100 Business Ranking List has been released by Placed. Based on in-store foot traffic measured through Placed’s 2.5 million user audience, this month’s list is a crucial one given the onset of the holiday shopping season. Typical of this time of year, 13 of the 15 businesses with the largest jump in store visit rank were retailers. The biggest climbers in rankings include Gap (+16 spots), Bath And Body Works (+15), J.C.Penney, Victoria’s Secret, and Macy’s (all +11 spots each).

Placed’s Top 100 Business Ranking List, based on in-store foot traffic, is now available for October. 35 businesses in total saw an increase in rank versus September, the two most prominent categories being Department Stores and Discount Stores, Warehouse & Wholesale Stores, with six businesses each experiencing upwards movement on the list.

Shopping in the spirit of spooky was the large driver behind this growth, as Party City climbed 21 spots to the number 84 most visited business in October. Foot traffic showed that US consumers were all about DIY costumes with attention to detail this year, as Goodwill rose 8-points, Michaels rose 7-points, and Sally’s Beauty Supply rose 5-points.

Placed’s Top 100 Business Ranking List, based on in-store foot traffic, is now available for September. 35 businesses in total saw an increase in rank versus August, the two most prominent categories being Fast Food and Gas Stations & Convenience Stores with four businesses each experiencing a climb on the list. Dominos’s Pizza and FedEx tied for the lead in terms of month-over-month rank change, rising 6 spots on the list, closely followed by Baskin-Robbins and Popeye’s Chicken.

Placed is proud to announce that our tag template is now certified for use in Google Tag Manager (GTM). Leveraging the scale and convenience of GTM, enabling Placed Attribution just got a whole lot easier! We’re excited to be working with Google to make attribution accessible to thousands of brands and advertisers using GTM.

For those of you who are new to GTM, it’s a tool that generates a single piece of code (container) that you add to your website or mobile app. From there, you can add tags and set firing conditions dynamically from the GTM dashboard without any code changes. It’s simple, fast and easy to test. See this handy guide from the GTM team for more information on getting started.

If you already use GTM for site/app analytics, here’s how you can integrate seamlessly with Placed…

1. Select a Container
From within Google Tag Manager, navigate to the Workspace tab. In the upper left, select a container from the drop down.

2. Add a Tag
Click Tags in the lefthand toolbar. Then select New. Give your new tag a descriptive name, such as Placed Attribution.

3. Enter Information
Fill out the tag template with information related to your tag. Click the icon to the right of the text box to add macros or enter your own.

4. Set a Trigger Event
Click within the empty Triggering box to add a trigger event. In this case we want the tag to fire on all pages. The Segment will pass the page path, so we’ll be able to measure store visitation for each page individually.

Through a unique combination of location ratings service data and custom survey data, Placed was able to directly measure the change in visits to Chipotle during the frenzy following the restaurant’s E. coli outbreaks.

By analyzing location behaviors of consumers sourced from our Placed Insights service over a 13-month period, the data shows a drop in monthly Chipotle visitation that directly correlates with the outbreaks. Chipotle’s share in monthly traffic hit a low of 8.04% during the month of January 2016, a full three months after the first initial outbreak, representing the lowest visitor share over the 13-month period.

On February 8th, 2016, Chipotle shut down its nationwide stores to retrain staff on food safety. At the same time, the company launched a campaign to reintroduce customers to the brand with free burritos. Coupons worth a generous total of $70 million in free burritos were given away.

The “reintroduction period” with the support of millions of free burritos proved to be a promising tactic as Chipotle’s visitor share in Placed Insights for February and March show a gentle spike. More specifically, the burrito coupons pushed March 2016 visitor share to a level almost as high as that of the previous year (8.81% visitor share in March 2016 vs. 8.86% in March the year prior). Overall, the promotion had a material impact in winning back Chipotle customers.

Digging deeper into Placed Insights data reveals restaurants that benefited from Chipotle’s recent turmoil. In terms of visitor share within the Mexican restaurant category, there were a few notable beneficiaries:

Looking beyond this category, Placed compared two leaders of the “fast-casual revolution,” Chipotle and Panera Bread. Examining overlap in visitation rates through November 2015, Panera Bread visitors were more likely to visit Chipotle than vice versa. However, in December 2015, the visitation points meet, indicating a shift in traffic from Chipotle to Panera.

To add some color and tell the whole story behind the numbers, Placed surveyed its audience on their most recent visit to Chipotle to find the ways that public sentiment has changed for the brand:

46% had visited Chipotle within the last two weeks prior to their current visit

19% of respondents cited a free burrito coupon as the primary reason for their visit, while 46% said a craving for Chipotle drove their visit

70% are likely to visit Chipotle again within the next month

Over 90% are aware of the E. coli outbreaks, and among those who are aware, 79% visit about the same or more frequently since the news of the E. coli outbreak

Measuring the success of Chipotle’s strategy through free burrito coupons, Placed discovered that visitors who are less likely to frequent Chipotle due to the E. coli outbreaks are more likely to use Chipotle coupons than visitors whose visitation has increased or remained the same:

Among those who visit Chipotle less frequently due to the outbreaks, 23% used a free burrito coupon during their visit, which is 27% higher than those whose visits didn’t decrease during this time frame.

For coupon users who visit less frequently since the outbreaks, the majority said prior to this Chipotle visit, their last visit was within the last 6 months (29%) or more than 6 months ago (16%)

This group of users is also 61% likely to visit Chipotle in the next month

Chipotle’s approach to winning back customers with coupons shows signs of early success with directly measured foot traffic from Placed Insights, and perception metrics from Placed Survey.